Is there anything *enjoyable* about our development process?

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2005 at 04:20:30PM -0400, Josh Sled wrote:
<snip>
> > > > 1) A small handful of developers who know all the conventions, never
> > > > break the single build, only do things everybody agrees on, and can't
> > > > keep their project from being dropped by distros - and no one dares to
> > > > join in.
> > > > 
> > > > or 
> > > > 
> > > > 2) Several handfuls of developers who have to regularly be corrected
> > > > in their breaking of conventions, regularly share code that doesn't
> > > > work and has to be fixed, do things that nobody agrees on, but there
> > > > are casual developers dropping in all the time and code keeps flowing.
> > > 
> > > [It distracts from your argument to parallel gnucash's recent history in
> > > (1), because that's not what we're talking about.  
> > 
> > I'm not just arguing abstractly; I'm talking about gnucash.  (1) is
> > basically the current state of gnucash.
> 
> I know you are, and that it is, but I think it distracts from an
> discussion about how development should work; consider how the proposals
> change:

Ok, I think I see you point now. "If things were different..."

> 
> 1) A small handful of developers who know all the conventions, never
> break the build, only do things everybody agrees on, and release regular
> versions.  The code is simple enough for casual contributors to
> regularly submit patches.

Well, I've only seen this happen with projects that are 1) quite small
(like could-be-handled-by-one-person-small) 2) quite mature (like
this-hasn't-changed-much-since-it-ran-on-PDP11-mature) and 3) have few
or no arch/lib dependencies (like you-just-need-/bin/sh).  (or at
least 2 of the 3).  And their development process is *BORING*.  :)

-chris